


Make It Feel Like Home

by doubtthestars



Series: jukebox hero [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Religion, he just didn't test well in school and had better things to do like look after raleigh, sort of graphic details of catacombs and bones, tendo is a cool cat, visiting historical sites count as a date right?, yancy is a big nerd on the inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 21:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/pseuds/doubtthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew he could do it with Raleigh, could Drift and pilot a hunk of metal into the sea. Yancy could do anything with Raleigh at his side, but he wondered where life would take him after this. Raleigh could do this until he died, but Yancy wouldn't let him. There had to be something to the future besides kaiju and jaegers. He just didn't know what it was, but knew it was closer in these moments, with Tendo in the middle of history older than Alaska had been a state.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make It Feel Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer."  
> -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The good thing about the PPDC was they never cared what you did or who you were prior to coming into their service. Tendo was proof of that. They never underestimated his capabilites, in fact, they might've overestimated them from time to time given the frequency of the LOCCENT problems at the beginning of the Jaeger program. Marshall Pentecost gave him a chance, just like he gave the Becket brothers a chance to excel, to flourish as pilot rockstars.

The world's chances were in the hands of the underdogs nobody turned to before, there was a joke in there somewhere, but Tendo couldn't be bothered to figure it out.

He knocked on the door that reminded him of the lower deck of a ship with a little bit of prison atmosphere for kicks, knowing that the Becket brothers resided inside. He heard a scuffle, possibly a muffled shout of anger and the door swung open to Yancy's slightly red face and Raleigh reading a book on his lower bunk, slightly snickering into the pages. Tendo raised an eyebrow at that, as he had gifted the history book to the younger man, and knew it was filled with facts and strategies not a good knock-knock joke. 

"Hey Raleigh, ready to go, Becket? I've wasted enough daylight with the damn Madre." It was a joke among the staff that the new prototype LOCCENT was as woeful and demanding as an aging Spanish mother. Tendo's mom had suffered tremendously through his childhood. It was the least he could do to dote on the Madre in penance, but that had moved back his plans with Yancy to late afternoon. The pilot had probably already had lunch. 

"Yeah, I just gotta-" Yancy trailed off but took the few footfalls towards his brother and whopped him across the back of his head. "do that." Raleigh glares indignantly, before scrambling up and opening his mouth wide, "Have fun on your goddamn-" The older Becket decided to slam the door shut on Raleigh's tantrum and parting words. Tendo chuckled at the brothers' antics. 

"Sometimes I'm glad I was an only child." He opens the door for Yancy and gets hit by the humid air relentless in its suffocating presence. He takes a look at Yancy's figure, clad in the standard cargo pants and issued army green t-shirt. Coming from Alaska, he was probably not yet used to the heat the South American country could reach.

"You have a car?" Yancy's surprise was palpable as he saw the strange burgundy-colored Chevy Tendo was leading him towards. On their little culture excursions, they usually took a jeep from the base or hiked it on their own, but this was the first time he had seen the old-fashioned, slightly beat up cruiser that looked more like an undercover cop car from the eighties than anything resembling the tastes of the man in front of him. 

"Yep, fixed it up for my great-uncle, never gave it back." The grey interiors squeaked as they slid into the heated can of a car. Tendo started it up with no problem and Yancy smiled at the crackling of the radio speakers, blasting a _cassette tape_ in Spanish. One of the weird quirks Raleigh had to put up with in the room was the radio blasting old tapes Yancy had collected over the years because he could never find a functioning Walkman. 

"You listen to tapes?" Tendo glanced at Yancy's face, gauging the expression as happy instead of judging. "Yeah, my mom left a lot of them at the old house, so I brought them with me when I came here to the Shatterdome. Made me feel a bit closer to her and it helped me acclimate to the constant Spanish-speaking." A sound of understanding came from Yancy. Tendo came back to Peru after Trespasser and stayed with his maternal relatives. The last of them besides a cousin in Australia whom he had never met. It was a culture shock, to come from a predominantly Chinese block in San Francisco to the sometimes dirt, sometimes paved streets of Lima. The quiet in the car was filled with salsa music that had that old quality of upbeat melancholia no other time period could match. It was a short trip, but the air conditioning beat walking in the heat. Tendo knew if he walked outside anymore, he would look as dark as Hector, the bartender at La Esquina. 

The guards nodded at the gateway of the monastery and scrutinized his companion briefly. "No te tardes tanto, Chucho, y dile a tu amigo que no te deje fumar adentro." The other guard laughs and claps him on the back before letting the two of them go in. 

Yancy's eyes grow wide at the detail of the monastery on the inside. The architecture was grandiose and Old World. He felt like he was stepping into the lungs of a beast, the quiet breaths he took coincided with the beast's. The statues and the paintings were so detailed, it would take ages for Yancy to move from one to the other. 

"Hey, don't get too excited, we should go downstairs first." Tendo smiled at Yancy's enthusiastic response before leading him down the stairs by the wrist. "You have to be careful, the steps are narrow." The sight was terrifying at a standstill. Yancy had faced down monsters, but this was oddly sickening. The bones all neatly piled and arranged into decorative forms. The weak lights gave their surroundings an amber tone. It felt like he was in a goddamn Indiana Jones movie. Tendo moved farther into the corridor and sat on a low standing wall, watching Yancy soak it all in. 

When Yancy first approached him to be a sort of tour guide of Peru, Tendo was a little confused. Someone in the Shatterdome must've mistaken his "I got lost in the Amazon once" story as an inclination of exploring the land and taking people with him. He had no idea where to take Yancy the first few times, so he started with vendors and food, the open-air market and the Main Plaza of Lima. He planned on the ruins and the Nazca lines later, when Yancy could take proper leave and they could hike around the Andes and the desert. Watching Yancy in these places, made him reevaluate how he saw them. Through his eyes, they were always there for him to peruse but with Yancy it was a race of what he could see, what could he afford to take time on and what did he have to step away from or else lose himself. His blue eyes were turned on him as he sat on his thoughts.

"The guards knew you." It wasnt a question, it was a simple statement of observation.

"I come here a lot on slow days, it's better than a church." Tendo wasnt exactly religious, he had faith, but not in a deity. The world was too broken for him to believe in that, but he liked the quiet, the grave atmosphere of the monastery. He avoided tour days like the plague, and sometimes he bribed the guards into letting him stay after hours, just for a little while. 

"We never went much to church. The last time I went was when Jazmine got baptized." Yancy swallowed hard at that memory, knowing that ache would flow through the Drift when the time came and Raleigh would give him a look like he was still ten years old with a chip on his shoulder. Their sister must've been in her teens by now if she were still alive who knows where. 

Tendo chose not to comment on the rarely mention Becket sibling, the one that seemed like a secret to the brothers, only coming out in drunken silence for the younger brother and sober silence for the eldest. Families were a tough subject for anybody. Tendo scratched at his neck knowing those two words would never fade. 

"My mother was a church goer. I wasn't. I just like the silence. Sometimes, the Shatterdome is too constant for me. Everybody working like bees to get things prepared for the next attack. So, I come here." Yancy took a seat next to him, a little uncomfortable at the prospect of sitting next to the bones of seemingly thousands of people, but Tendo was right on the quiet front. 

"You _would_ hang out in a creepy place like this to get away from saving the world." Gently, he knocked his shoulder into Tendo's, an echo of the others usual action. He envied Tendo sometimes, being in the background of the action. The emblem of the PPDC felt carved into his shoulders, silent but weighty. He was a hero, a nobody from Alaska became a hero by circumstance. Raleigh was the one who wanted to fight. He was the one that wanted to destroy the kaiju for destroying their world, and after their mom got sick...well that was the only thing on Raleigh's mind. He knew he could do it with Raleigh, could Drift and pilot a hunk of metal into the sea. Yancy could do anything with Raleigh at his side, but he wondered where life would take him after this. Raleigh could do this until he died, but Yancy wouldn't let him. There had to be something to the future besides kaiju and jaegers. He just didn't know what it was, but knew it was closer in these moments, with Tendo in the middle of history older than Alaska had been a state. 

"Raleigh's the big hero saving the world. I'm not, and you're definitely not, old man." Yancy sputtered at the usual name-calling coming from a different person. "We're the same age!" echoed in the enclosed space, now jovial instead of solemn.

"C'mon, I need a smoke and you need to see this place's library. It has a spanish dictionary you might find helpful." He smirked as he dusted off his pants and bounded up the stairs. Yancy smiled himself silly before chasing after Tendo.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I dated myself with the Walkman reference. Oh well. trans: Hey, don't take too long and tell your friend to keep you from smoking inside. I keep switching POVs because my brain hates me. 
> 
> The first Spanish dictionary is in the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima, Peru. Also the catacombs.


End file.
